Underwater ... the streets of Bundaberg this week. Photo: Getty Images
During World War II - at the height of the Blitz, when half of London's East End was in flames - Buckingham Palace was bombed.
As the royal family examined the damage, the then Queen Elizabeth (the reigning monarch's late mother) famously remarked that at least now she could look the East End in the face.
Well, I feel a little like that about the flood victims, having spent 48 hours penned in by the normally inoffensive - indeed positively tranquil - Allyn River.
As I write, we are still waiting for the raging torrent to subside so we can safely cross the four causeways that stand between us and the rest of the world.
It is a funny feeling to be cut off in our super-connected environment. Inconvenient, certainly, but not entirely unpleasant given that we have plenty of food and wine and the electricity has not as yet succumbed to the onslaught (fingers crossed).
Mind you, just as Buck House sustained only a few shattered windows courtesy of the Luftwaffe, so my high and dry experience of the tumultuous past few days hardly compares with those who have really suffered the worst.
I did have to cancel a hair appointment. I accept that may seem like a classic first-world problem but you have not seen the current state of my hair.
Seriously though, my heart goes out to those who have lost their homes under the deluge and particularly to the families of those who lost their lives. My admiration for the many people who work to help those affected by the extreme weather knows no bounds.
When the floodwater recedes, I will go home and get on with my life, but for the real victims that's when the heartbreaking and exhausting clean-up begins. I hope I never have to face the filth and stench of the muck that must now be removed from inundated houses.
When you live in Australia - despite 89 per cent of us now living in cities and towns - you come up against the terrifying power of nature fairly regularly.
Bushfires were a regular part of my childhood. One burnt right up to the kerb across the road from us and another was held back only by the brick retaining wall around the pool.
My most vivid memory, however, is of the TV news crew that got one of the neighbourhood mothers to run through the smoke with her baby in her arms to add drama. It wasn't her dramatic run that excited me; it was that she might be on the news!
The distinctive smell of bushfire is one every Australian nose has been trained to recognise.
My father was a member of the local volunteer bushfire brigade all through my youth and my husband and brother-in-law have both stood on the roofs of houses armed with humble garden hoses hoping to keep flames at bay.
Of course, there is nothing exclusively Australian about natural disasters. Floods happen the world over, as do fires (though I think we may be up there with the best of them on that league table).
Tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes tend to happen elsewhere. Indeed, compared with countries that annually struggle with snow and temperatures below freezing, our climate is relatively benign. But, as we have seen this week, that does not mean it cannot turn nasty.
The question I can't help asking is whether our climate is beginning to turn nasty more often than it used to. Most scientists seem to think so and - call me crazy - I tend to have a lot of time for science. I even vaccinated my children! For decades now, climate scientists have been warning us that if global temperatures rise by just a few degrees we can expect to see more extreme weather more often; colder winters, hotter summers, longer droughts, heavier rains. Well, I'm no scientist, but that's what I am seeing.
I am not the only one. My husband is in the wine industry, so last year we were lucky enough to take a trip through the wine-growing regions in France. While we were there I noticed that many of the wineries had been keeping detailed weather records for centuries, often begun by monks.
Out of curiosity, I asked each of our expert guides if they were seeing any effects of climate change. Without exception they all said they were and that they were now harvesting their grapes an average of two to three weeks earlier than they used to. In Australia we are seeing wine companies buying up land in the cooler climate of Tasmania, precisely because they are also seeing grapes ripen earlier in their mainland vineyards.
This affects the quality of the wine, which directly affects their business. Just like science, I have a lot of time for business. Both disciplines tend to respect hard evidence and make their decisions for rational, measurable reasons.
Trouble is, human beings tend not to change until it gets too uncomfortable to stay the same. While the past few days have been very uncomfortable for far too many Australians, for most of us the extreme rainstorms have been, at most, a moderately inconvenient blip on the radar. Once the floodwater falls we will get back to our own lives, we'll get our hair done and other important things. We will not change. Yet.
It may be worth remembering, however, that greater western Sydney, the most densely populated part of our largest city, is on a giant flood plain.
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